CART

This first one is a large trunk of tree I’ve been walking past for the last 5 years on a beach on the south coast of Fife between Leven and Largo in Scotland. I’ve hauled it away to work on in my London studio and 3 months and 112,000 dry wall screws later here it is.

I don’t know how old Dark Matter’s wood is. Might be 10, might be 50 could be over a hundred years old. I’ve stripped out the dead wood in the tree, treated it with wood preserver and completely covered its form with the screws.

It’s an incredible shape. Not one I would have designed and carved out but one I had to find. It’s incredibly organic. It’s wood but feels almost like a giant piece of coal or what’s left of that after burning in a fire.

I’ve followed the curves of the wood with the screws to enhance dark matters natural form but it doesn’t feel to me like I’m screwing screws into wood. It feels more like I’ve got an engine block up on a bench and I’m tinkering with it….it feels like technology.

It feels like I’m below the fuselage of a plane tightening screws into the underside of the wing, carefully measuring each twist.

I feel like a NASA technician dressed in clean gear fixing ceramic tiles to the underside of the space shuttle.

Precision – that seems to be the overall feeling as I describe my way around this object. An object I’ve found. An object shaped by the weather, by the sand, by the sea, by the rain and the wind and finally by me – a joint effort, all the elements, even fire.

All those natural elements and me have crafted this piece and yet it looks to me like it has just landed from space, like an asteroid.

I have never worked on anything that wanted to describe itself to you so much three dimensionally and do successfully.

CONTACT DETAILS

EMAIL : karen.murat@davidmach.com

Studio (by appointment only) 8 Havelock Walk, London SE23 3HG

+ +44 (0) 208 6995659

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